


Light in Dark Places

by followthefreedomtrail



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 19:44:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20711510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followthefreedomtrail/pseuds/followthefreedomtrail
Summary: Nora gets what she never wanted. But she has Danse, and it may just be okay.





	Light in Dark Places

**Author's Note:**

> As a general rule, I’m not a huge fan of pregnancy stuff, but I had a lot of fun writing it and discovering that, contrary to popular belief, I can and do occasionally write happy things.
> 
> xoxo

For a beat, there’s only organic thumping beneath orange fabric and holotags. She can hear it as clearly as the waterfalls she remembers. Rushing, violent uproar in her ears. Like she’s being sucked underneath it. Drowned.

She knows she is alive and not much else.

But Cade keeps talking, the smooth lilt of a practitioner. Only just audible over all of the white noise, that voice grows clearer every second.

“Are you listening, Knight?”

She shakes her head. It’s less the honesty so highly esteemed by the Brotherhood than it is that she couldn’t care less what the knight-captain thinks of her.

“We need to inform your superiors. Elder Maxson and Paladin Danse will-”

She blinks and waves a hand through the air in a silent plea to stop. It’s too much, all of it. She’s only just grasping the words he’d said herself, wrangling them and forcing herself to comprehend what may as well be a foreign language.

She will need weeks, months, years to understand. But he’s asking her _now_ to tell Arthur Maxson, of all people.

And Danse.

Not Danse.

She knows him well. Far, far too well. A product of so much time spent traveling together, talking, not to mention a fair bit of convincing on her part that his well-kept boundaries be damned. If Cade had any clue, he wouldn’t ask this of her so lightly. But he doesn’t. She’d ignored every prodding of paternity until he’d sighed in resignation and scribbled something on that pretentious clipboard.

A big, fat question mark, she hopes.

Certainly, she knows her sponsor better than anyone. And still not well enough to pretend she has any idea how he’ll react.

Before she can run through every possibility, prepare herself for the necessary confrontation, he is already there, rubbing his eyes like he’d finally settled into a decent sleep when he’d been summoned and she could _kick_ _herself_ for being the reason he’s awake.

“Reporting as requested, sir,” he grumbles, voice laden with exhaustion.

When he lays eyes on his knight, seated at the edge of a cot, legs swinging in a restless arc, he straightens his spine and his brows draw together. Nervous, as well he should be.

She sees it all from her peripheral because her gaze is locked on an empty bag of Radaway across the room. She won’t look up for anything.

He shifts from foot to foot, his face blurry in the edges of her vision. “Did something happen?”

The knight-captain looks to her pointedly, like he’s waiting for her to offer the news of her own volition. As if she should be happy. As if, in this day and age, she has anything to be excited about.

She presses dry lips together in silent protest. She will say it in her way, in her timing, or not at all. Danse isn’t ready and she sure fucking isn’t. The man is all the way out of his goddamn mind if he thinks four in the morning is really a good time for–

“It’s come to my attention,” Cade clears his throat, “that your charge is… with child.”

Her eyes slide shut tightly, block out light and color and expressions. A single tear escapes from between sealed lids. She could wring Cade’s neck for all the subtlety he lacks.

A metal clang echoes through the room and she eases one eye open to survey the damage.

Danse is surrendered, fallen on his knees, his hands tugging at the roots of hair. He looks at her with all of the tenderness he has to offer and all of the fear she’s never seen, not _once._

In her distress, she’s forgotten that Danse has never done this.

She knows what it is to carry a baby up until its first cries. The discomfort, the wonder, the sacred stretch of skin over womb.

It may have been a good two centuries since her body last attempted that feat but _Danse_. Danse is a stranger to that particular marvel and it’s painfully obvious.

And now, Cade can put two and two together.

He eases his mouth open. “Well. I will… give you a moment, then, paladin. Knight.”

His boots click against the metal grating, fainter and fainter until she feels terrifyingly, awkwardly alone with Danse.

“You… when did you find out?” he asks slowly.

She wants to sigh, push the weighty breath from her lungs, but every muscle is stiff. He deserves to know but her tongue won’t move.

He braces himself against the examination table and pulls himself upright to stand on rubbery legs. One hand drags down his face in an attempt to cleanse it of the shock. “I… it is… mine?”

“Jesus,” she whispers. They never labeled anything but he should know her, know how completely incapable she was of juggling partners. “Of course.”

He takes her face in his hands, warm against her already burning skin. From this close, she can see a hundred thousand questions registering at once but he chooses only one.

“How are you feeling?”

_Rattled. Shaken to her core. Petrified._

But before the words form, before she can say anything, she’s cut off by the lump in her throat.

He knows. Somehow. Knows she wants to speak but she just _can’t_. So he wraps his arms around her so she feels small and safe. A homecoming, she thinks. No better place to give into the overwhelming panic of parenting in the hell hole called the Commonwealth.

“Can’t do this again,” she cries into his damp shoulder.

“Tell me what you need,” he murmurs against her temple. His hand rubs up and down her spine and she wonders if he knows what he does for her. A solid wall of pure patience surrounding her.

At his request, she dissolves into a blubbering mess, hysterical words falling from her in a downpour of worry strong enough to sweep him away and drown them both.

“I need you to do it for me, Danse.” She pulls him closer by the buckles on his suit, presses her nose into his neck and breathes in. He smells like long nights. Like warm fires and armor grease and the sweet tang of bourbon. “I can’t do it all again—the sleepless nights, the delivery—I’m just not strong enough to do it all again. To _lose_ it all again.”

His arms tightening around her are her only reply. Reminders that he isn’t going anywhere, especially not now.

“How are you feeling?” she asks against his skin.

Finally, he steps back. Enough for anxious muddy eyes to sweep over her face and evaluate the answer.

“I… never imagined…” he swallows hard. “Not to say I hadn’t longed for a family of my own. It just seemed highly unlikely and, well… I’d given up.”

She had it wrong. He isn’t upset. Nervous, sure. But the glint she sees is excitement.

She raises her brows, a mile high in surprise. “You want this.”

The words are an anchor for the weary vessel she inhabits. She hadn’t realized how much of her own reaction was riding on his but her breaths come easier knowing he’s happy—jubilant, she’s noticing.

He grins down at her. “I suppose I do.”

It isn’t until then that she starts crying and confusion spreads across Danse’s face as he holds her. She should explain. It isn’t right to leave him in the dark but doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he know that she doesn’t deserve this? Two perfect, idyllic families in one lifetime, one ripped to shreds and now redeemed in the Prydwen’s med bay.

He is so close to tears himself, watching her break down, moisture finally rolling down stubbled cheeks when she says, “I know you’ll be a wonderful father.”

Cade doesn’t return until they’re all cried out, smiling stupidly at each other as they let themselves discuss the more exciting aspects of planning for a baby. _Their_ baby. Try as he might, Danse cannot look anywhere but her stomach in a daze of wonderment. It’s a beautiful thing, his face as the reality sinks deeper still.

He wants this. Has wanted it for God knows how long. A secret desire, dormant for decades. And when she says that he’s everything a father should be, there is an unexpected ferocity behind her words because she really means it and she needs him to know.

She doesn’t expect the way he looks at her to change but there’s an undeniable spark in his eye when he smiles down at her now. The fragile vault dweller, who couldn’t have known the importance of stumbling into the Cambridge Police Station and assisting the man in the power armor she could only describe as stuffy.

Paladin Danse, Brotherhood of Steel soldier. Loyal companion. History buff. Hopeless romantic. And now, father of her child.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I still love Fallout and Paladin Danse entirely too much!!
> 
> xoxo


End file.
